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Following demands by the UN General Assembly that both Israel and Hamas launch independent investigations into their conduct during the 22-day Israeli operation which began in December 2008, on 4 February 2010 the Palestinian government in Gaza submitted its official response to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights regarding the recommendations of the Goldstone report.
In a meeting with the OHCHR Director in Gaza, Hamas Minister of Justice Faraj Al-Ghoul said that his government took many serious measures to implement its obligations toward the report such as the formation of a governmental committee to follow up the implementation of the recommendations mentioned in the report.
He also referred to the formation of an independent committee composed of international law experts in order to ensure the transparency and integrity of the actions taken.
By contrast, the Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak responded by touting there was no army as "responsible... moral and accurate ... even under impossible conditions," as Israel. According to Barak, "The Goldstone report is distorted, falsified and not balanced."
Moreover, the decision of the UN Human Rights Council to adopt the report was classified by Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai as ’diplomatic anarchy.’
The report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure during the conflict, in which human rights groups say about 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died.
In November 2009, by a vote of 344 to 36 the US Congress appeased Israel by adopting a Bill "calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the “Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict” in multilateral fora.
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